Quotes About Christianity

Jesus died crying out to God 'My God, why hast thou forsaken me?' All Christian theology and all Christian life is basically an answer to the question which Jesus asked as he died.

Now I begin to be a disciple. . . . Let fire and cross, flocks of beasts, broken bones, dismemberment, come upon me, so long as I attain to Jesus Christ. IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH

throughout the whole history of Christianity there has been a tension between the past and the present, between the given and the sought, between revelation as a deposit in some sense and revelation as the goal of an endeavor, between the faith to be conserved and the truth to be acquired. The tension has not been resolved by the centuries of Christian thought, but a solution cannot be attempted without taking them into account.

Finally, Christians were accused of being subversive, for they refused to worship the emperor and thus destroyed the very fiber of society. The apologists answered that it was true that they refused to worship the emperor or any other creature, but that in spite of this they were loyal subjects of the empire. What the emperor needs—they said—is not to be worshiped, but to be served; and those who serve him best are those who pray for him and for the empire to the only true God.

The earliest Christians did not consider themselves followers of a new religion. All of their lives they had been Jews and they still were. This was true of Peter and the twelve, of the seven, and of Paul. Their faith was not a denial of Judaism but was rather the conviction that the messianic age had finally arrived.

Thus, the theme of the book commonly called Acts of the Apostles is not so much the deeds of the apostles, as the deeds of the Holy Spirit through the apostles (and others). Luke has left us two books, the first on the deeds of Jesus, and the second on the deeds of the Spirit.

This triune God created humankind according to the divine image. But the human creature itself is not the image of God; that image is the Son, in whom and by whom we have been created.

The lordship of Christ is basic to our defense of Christianity. Christ now reigns. He is Lord. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him. That authority is the prerequisite to the command to make disciples. Without that authority, baptism and disciple making in and for the church are meaningless.

Christian apologetics is the application of biblical truth to unbelief.

Scripture is clear that without holiness no one will see the Lord (Heb. 12:14). In wanting to be "relevant" to those who are not in Christ, we may be displaying more of a life "in Adam" than we might think. This bodes ill for the art of persuasion in covenantal apologetics. If Christianity makes little difference in the way we walk and talk on a day-to-day basis, we should not think that there will be any obvious reason for others to want to consider a life in Christ.23

I believe, as followers of Christ, we are commanded to reach out to the least of these in the name of Jesus and show them they matter a great deal to God, who sacrificed His only Son to reach them with His love.

I have traveled millions of miles, speaking to Christians. I have counseled privately with hundreds of them about their beliefs and lifestyles. What I have found has to be one of the most tragic ironies of all time: A tiny group of believers who have the Gospel keep mumbling it over and over to themselves. Meanwhile, millions who have never heard it once fall into the flames of eternal hell without ever hearing the salvation story.

I came the second I heard," she told me breathlessly. "I can't believe it! Until this time we've only had the Boscana manuscript as any proof this religion arose before the introduction of Christianity and not in response to it!

In the Christian context, we do not mean by a "mystery" merely that which is baffling and mysterious, an enigma or insoluble problem. A mystery is, on the contrary, something that is revealed for our understanding, but which we never understand exhaustively because it leads into the depth or the darkness of God. The eyes are closed—but they are also opened.

We see that it is not the task of Christianity to provide easy answers to every question, but to make us progressively aware of a mystery. God is not so much the object of our knowledge as the cause of our wonder.

Christianity is more than a theory about the universe, more than teachings written down on paper; it is a path along which we journey—in the deepest and richest sense, the way of life.

Images and thoughts will constantly rise up within us. Let them recede into the background. In the foreground, put Jesus.

The Christian God is not just a unit but a union, not just unity but community. There

To be a Christian is to be a traveller. Our situation, say the Greek Fathers, is like that of the Israelite people in the desert of Sinai: we live in tents, not houses, for spiritually we are always on the move. We are on a journey through the inward space of the heart, a journey not measured by the hours of our watch or the days of the calendar, for it is a journey out of time into eternity.

The Jesus Prayer is not only Christ-centered but Trinitarian.

In the early days of Christianity the exercise of chastity was frequently combined with a close and romantic intimacy of affection between the sexes which shocked austere moralists.

I think that whether someone is a Christian or not, the idea that a human life has dignity and intrinsic worth should be clear enough.

It is an invention of the devil, an infernal falsity for the destruction of all Christianity.

I have been a Christian all my life, but it's impossible to be so deeply involved in these stories without it making you think again, and without it making you consciously aware of the people involved.